


brink

by Lvslie



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Amused Ellie, Awkward Alec, Awkward Flirting, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Crack, Post-Season/Series 03, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 17:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11236155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lvslie/pseuds/Lvslie
Summary: ‘It’s like, I’m allowed to call you a loser,’ she concedes finally, in a deeply thoughtful voice. ‘But I’d sure as hell beat up anyone else who’d do that.’





	brink

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: because i’ve recently finished broadchurch and because as much as i liked it, i felt like there was something to add.

Ellie is staring at her bubbly pink drink vacantly. She heaves a sigh. The case was a bloody nightmare. The prospect of coming home to Tom and her father is currently a bloody nightmare. And life really is shit after all, because—

But before she can follow through with the thought, something dark and somewhat looming slouches over with a groany sigh and successfully obscures the light from the dancefloor. Ellie looks over, with the ‘would you move away—’ at the tip of her tongue.

She trails off. The dark and looming thing sniffs, glaring pointedly ahead and apparently trying to sink into a shapeless coat in the greyest shade of blue ever invented. Ellie blinks.

‘Shut up, Miller.’

For a moment, she sits in amazement, trying to decide on what to comment on first. Meanwhile, Hardy continues attempting to melt into a puddle of coat, rigid and pointedly shuffled away from her.

She finally finds her voice. ‘How did you even know which pub I—’

‘I followed you.’ Abruptly. And then, ‘Don’t brag about it.’

‘You fucking followed me.’

‘Miller—’

‘You went and … We’ve just finished a case of a serial rapist and you thought the most acceptable way of agreeing to have a drink with me is disagreeing to have a drink with me and then skulking all the way through dingy alleys of Broadchurch up to—’

‘I did not skulk.’

‘—what if I noticed and didn’t know it was you, huh? What if I knocked you unconscious with my purse or something? It’s full of Fred’s hot wheels, it would hurt as fuck—’

‘You didn’t notice.’

‘Because I’d never fucking think you’d—’

Hardy’s voice gets a bit stronger and a bit whinier. ‘You should have noticed, by the way. You’re a policewoman, Miller, you need to… you need to watch out for yourself, for God’s sake.’

She stares. ‘Oh, you cocky little—’

‘Miller, please. I didn’t—I didn’t come here to fight with you.’

Something inside Ellie flares. ‘Oh, yeah? What did you come for, then?’

Hardy hesitates, apparently struggling with himself. ‘I …’

‘Telling me to shut up first thing when you see me, seems like not to have a friendly chat,’ Ellie interrupts, impervious to his dilemma. ‘Honestly, if not for the fact I didn’t hear any bloody sirens outside I’d think someone was murdered out there—’

‘Miller …’

‘… oh my God, someone did, didn’t they? Someone went and got murdered and that’s why you’ve come all the way and—’

Quite abruptly, Hardy leans very close in, and Ellie automatically deflects, overcame with a somewhat irrational fear of getting stung in the eye with a bit of his scruff.

‘Miller, will you be quiet?’ he repeats almost pleadingly.

She falls obediently silent, squinting at him. Apparently becoming aware of his rather uncharacteristic positioning, Alec angles back into his usual slouch, sniffing in a way that somehow manages to contort half his face and staring hollowly at his hands.

After a minute, Ellie takes pity of him.

‘What’s it, then?’ she asks, slightly mollified, nudging him with an elbow. He seems startled at the touch and looks at her like a frightened rabbit—before quickly returning to a morose expression and gazing away.

He grunts out, ‘I’m not good at this.’

Miller quirks an eyebrow. ‘You’ll need to be more specific than that, you know. Because I could list quite a lot—’

‘This,’ he interjects, more forcefully, wringing his hands at the counter in a helpless motion. ‘This kind of … stuff.’

Realisation dawns on her and Miller beams.

‘Aww, you’ve never got properly sloshed before, have you? All duty of care and lousy heart, you never had a chance to have a go at it, poor thing. Well, let me tell you, why don’t I just show you how I do it and you just go with the flow, I promise you it’s quite easy once—’

‘Miller.’ There’s a certain steely quality to his voice now.

‘Yes, Alec?’

‘I have drunk alcohol in my life.’

She shrugs one shoulder. ‘If you say so.’

Hardy appears to be growing increasingly more agitated. ‘Why do you always presume I’m bound to be bad at everything I touch?’

Ellie shoots him a pointed glance, but he looks genuinely upset. She softens up a bit.

‘I mean, you have to admit, you weren’t exactly in your heyday when you first got there,’ she says in a somewhat conciliatory manner.

Alec sighs. ‘No.’

Ellie needles on, ‘And you’re barely better now.’

‘No, but …’

‘I mean look at you …’

‘Miller, honestly, I’m perfectly aware—’

‘… walking all stick-thin and slumping like you’re about to fall over with the next step. I mean I’m glad you stopped wheezing your lungs out and having aneurysms every other day, so that’s an improvement, but honestly? Each time I see you I get this weird and violent urge—’

Hardy emits something of a spluttery cough into a glass of beer that has appeared before him out of nowhere.

‘—to feed you. I mean it, I’d gladly watch you eat a steak or something. It’s a good thing you won’t hug me anymore, ‘cause I’d probably get cut with some pointy bone or whatnot. Order some chips, will you? I’ll pay.’

At that, he finally looks at her. ‘I won’t hug you?’

‘Yeah, that’s what I said, you …’

‘You won’t let me hug you!’ he retorts.

Ellie instantly falls silent. Blinks. Something just doesn’t add up in the picture in front of her, in the way Alec has straightened up in his seat and is looking absolutely indignant.

‘When the hell have you been trying to hug me?’ she says incredulously.

Hardy is unfazed. ‘After the trial. Your … uh, Joe Miller’s trial. And after closing Sandbrook. You said you’re not hugging me. So we shook hands.’

His voice is full of something suspiciously like resentment. For a moment she’s too stunned to formulate words.

Then she smacks him on the arm.

‘Ow,’ Alec mutters.

‘That was three bloody years ago, you twat!’

‘What difference does it make?’ Hardy says, voice growing high-pitched as he rubs his arm, leaning away from her.

‘It makes all the difference in the world!’ She reflects on it. Huffs.

‘That’s why … why you wouldn’t bloody touch me on those steps after Leo … and why you raved about how ‘not all men’ and blah blah? Because that was such a shitty move, honestly…’

Alec doesn’t look guilty—or at least, not as much as she thinks he’s supposed to. ‘And how was I supposed to know you had a change of mind three years later?’

She looks at him furiously. ‘Maybe if you called at least once in the span of the three years, you’d have a better knowledge of my patterns of behaviour!’

He sniffs again. ‘You didn’t call me either.’

Ellie is apoplectic. ‘You’re fucking impossible.’

‘I told you, I’m not good at this—’

‘Oh, don’t you play Mr fucking Darcy now.’

Alec emits a distressed sigh, his bluntness melting off with each second, ‘Ellie …’

‘Don’t call me Ellie.’

He winces. ‘Miller, then—’

‘Don’t call me Miller!’

‘What am I supposed to call you!’ he shouts, throwing up his hands.

‘Don’t talk to me at all!’ Ellie yells. Met with his newly rigid and hurt expression, she adds, grudgingly, ‘For a while!’

With a disgruntled huff, Hardy utters his drawn out brogue-ish, ‘Fine,’ and swivels on his stool to face away from her.

After a moment of intense concentration on her raging annoyance, Ellie snaps.

‘What were you doing on that pier, then, eh?’ she asks accusingly, reaching for the bowl of peanuts in front of her so greedily that it nearly falls over.

Hardy blinks. He’s been cautiously approaching the tasting of his beer, so the croaked reply comes out rather damp, ‘What pier?’

‘Brighton Pier,’ she says sarcastically, ‘the one I left you on, what else? What were you doing there all this time? I saw you walk off, but there’s literally nothing else there. Just … the sea.’

‘I just …’

‘Did you want to jump?’ Ellie asks in a threatening voice, looming over him and prepared to launch into a rant concerning Daisy, Mark Latimer and her general opinion on men. ‘Because honestly, Hardy, if that’s it then—’

Hardy nearly squeaks. ‘No!’

Ellie leans away. ‘Then what, were you having an existential crisis? Or what?’

He seems to be bracing himself, crossing his arms and leaning forward over the beer. ‘Sort of. No. I just—I was thinking.’

‘Oh, wow. Impressive.’ She takes a generous sip of her drink and Hardy shoots her a nasty look.

‘Jesus, why do you have to be so difficult,’ he says, and it’s more of a statement than a question. Ellie shrugs.

‘Aw, come on, do continue,’ she coaxes, flashing him a grin. Her good mood is returning and she kicks her leg up and down against the counter. ‘What were you thinking about?’

‘Just … stuff,’ Alec mutters tentatively. ‘The future. Certain … approaches to life.’

‘Approaches to life, you say?’ She tries—and fails—to devoid her tone of mirth. Hardy doesn’t seem to notice.

‘Aye.’

‘Christ. And how far along are you, by the way, with the writing?’

‘The … what?’

‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles? Mind you, you’re doing mighty fine so far on the trauma …’

He seems to deflate a little, but he does roll his eyes. ‘Very funny, Miller.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Ellie says, still grinning and squirming in her seat. She fishes out a bunch of peanuts from the bowl throws them at him. Alec doesn’t as much as flinch, staring dejectedly into space ahead.

He hasn’t, she notices with satisfaction, drunk more than two careful sips of his beer. As far as evidence of his inevitable quality of being very fun when drunk goes, Ellie would definitely go to court with that.

She’s shaken out of her reverie on how to actually get him properly drinking when he repeats, sullenly, ‘I’m not good at this.’

She shoves the next couple of peanuts into her mouth and starts chewing contemplatively. ‘This should be your motto. I’ll get someone to embroider all your suits with it.’

Then she frowns, ‘although I’m fairly certain you only have one. Do you?’

For a lingering moment, Hardy remains quiet. His features soften somewhat and Ellie takes a wild gamble at where his thoughts are travelling to.

‘Daisy is staying,’ he says finally, in such a wistful tone that—had she not known him—she’d have thought he was quite upset about the fact.

Ten points to Ellie.

‘My God,’ she says aloud, snickering. ‘You really are awfully predictable. You know? You’ve got, like, two conversation modes. Just two. Daisy and murder. No wonder no one knows what to do around you.’

If possible—and she does doubt that—Hardy manages to sag even further. She almost thinks he’s going to leave it without a comment, like he often does, either with her little jibes or her never-ending blabbering.

But then he does reply and she nearly chokes on a peanut.

‘If I’m so awful, why would you even want to spend time with me? Why would you ask me out for a drink?’

He tugs the glass violently towards himself but remains pointedly not drinking. And pointedly not looking at her.

It sounds, Ellie is convinced, like something her wee Fred could have said, in a surly and fussy voice and regarding a kid in the playground that didn’t want to share a shovel with him.

‘Hey,’ she says finally, softly, and nudges Alec once again.

Some of his almost-untouched beer spills over and he winces at her, much like he’s about to launch into a whiny lecture that would conveniently change the topic.

‘Shut up,’ Ellie says before he does, mouth full of peanuts. ‘You’re not awful.’

He looks at her dubiously: enormous sad eyes in an unshaven thin face, and an impossibly askew tie under a rumpled collar. Ellie has to fight off a sigh.

‘I mean, course, you’re bit of a loser,’ she corrects herself, led by her prevailing sense of justice—and watches the downwards travel of Alec’s shoulders once again.

‘But, it’s like … it’s like …’

‘What?’ he grunts.

‘It’s like, I’m allowed to call you a loser,’ she concedes finally, in a deeply thoughtful voice. ‘But I’d sure as hell beat up anyone else who’d do that.’

There’s a while of silence.

‘Thanks,’ says Hardy, thickly.

‘I’m serious,’ Ellie promises. ‘There’d be kicking. And bag-swinging.’

‘There’s … no need for that.’ 

‘Eh, you’re no fun,’ she declares. Shooting him a sideways glance, she notices a barely-there hint of a smile.

‘You’re sort of contradicting yourself,’ he tells her eventually.

‘So are you.’ She points to his beer. ‘Avid drunk, you are, as far as I see.’

‘No, I …’ he gives her another tormented glance. ‘I wanted to properly talk to you, is all.’

Ellie looks at him expectantly, but whatever speech he seems to have prepared while standing on the far end of the pier, gazing out at the sea—it seems unable to actually travel all the way out of his throat. He looks quite conflicted.

She smacks her lips, debating on her choices. Then she slaps Hardy’s thigh, causing him to start. ‘Come on, let’s have a walk then.’

Alec blinks owlishly. ‘A walk? But you wanted to—’

‘I’m not a cow, I can change my opinion every now and then, thank you very much—and now I just want to get you to eat something. Honestly, you’re giving me anxiety. So we’re getting you a fish and chips.’

He’s undeterred, ‘No.’

‘That’s what you said the last time,’ Ellie throws at him triumphantly and he groans. ‘And yet here we are.’

She slides off her seat but he remains pointedly unmoving, giving her what he probably thinks is a stern look. She hasn’t the heart to tell him there’s an impressive cowlick on the top of his head.

‘And I promise, if you secretly follow me this time, I’ll kick you in the balls, no name-checking,’ she says instead, amiably.

He lands on the floor with surprising grace. Ellie smirks as they head outside.

She leads them all the way up the docks to the cliffside, where she envisions something rather like a picnic. She’s trying to assess the quality of Hardy’s rugged coat as a blanket when he says, in an oddly strained voice.

‘This is nice.’

Ellie looks around wildly. In the distance, a dog is howling, and in front of them, there’s a large hole in the ground, surrounded by a tattered police tape perched on protruding sticks. The moon is reflected pale and clumsy in the trembling sea. The wind is briny, but there’s an unmistakable lingering scent of fish hanging in the air. ‘Wha’s nice?’

Alec inhales deeply and then sighs, ‘This. Weather. The—er, the walk.’

Ellie stares at him for a moment and then snorts with laughter. ‘You really are bad at this, you know.’

Alec isn’t amused. He looks away from her and sticks his hands in his pockets. ‘Yeah.’

Ellie drifts closer to nudge him with her elbow once again. This time, however, Alec is clearly unprepared—he stumbles and nearly topples over into the water. ‘Jesus, Miller, watch out.’

‘Oh, stop fussing, you’ll live,’ Ellie replies merrily. He grunts something incoherent in reply.

‘What I meant to say before you had another of your little near death experiences,’ she develops, without paying much attention to his grumbling, ‘is that I don’t mind.’

Hardy tenses up. ‘You … don’t?’

Ellie looks over at him, frowning rather theatrically. ‘Nah, you’ll do. I sorta like it the way it is. Even with that bloody cowlick up your head, I mean have you seen yourself? Honestly, I should just go ahead and buy you a mirror—’

She continues, and he grumbles in response, frantically combing through his hair and making it look abysmally worse, as they amble up the dimly-lit pathway to the chippy. But Ellie Miller is a trained DS and hardly anything escapes her eager eyes.

And surely not the fact that Hardy is now vehemently trying not to smile.


End file.
